Reform is a word that can be used to talk about changing something for the better. When we reform something, it can mean making it fairer or more efficient. For example, juvenile delinquents are often sent to reform schools so that they can become better citizens. We also use the term to refer to a more general change in a system, such as when we say that a law needs to be reformated.
A person devoted to bringing about such changes is called a reformer. During the antebellum period, America saw a proliferation of reform movements that were remarkable for their energy, variety, and occasional strangeness. These movements grew out of an array of changes in American life. The most fundamental change was an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century shift in religious and secular attitudes toward human effort to remake the world.
In the religious realm, this change was a move away from moralizing Puritanism, such as that of the Baptists and Quakers, towards Unitarianism, which had a more optimistic view of the human condition. This brought a millenialist, utopian, perfectionist strand into the reform movement.
Secular changes, meanwhile, were fed by a belief in human reason and the power of the individual to remake society. These new beliefs gave a sense of urgency to the reform movement. In the end, the movement’s success depended on its ability to translate these ideas into concrete programs of change. This was especially true of the sanitary reform movement, which established the first asylums for the mentally ill and public school systems to give poor Americans access to education.